The camp appeared to be strung through the whole beech grove that covered the
crest of the hill. The first sign of it began less than ten yards beyond the
sentry, where a couple of squatting thralls were skinning a slain deer; and as
far as eye could swim in the flood of sunset light, the green aisles were
dotted with scattered groups. Every flat rock had a ring of dice-throwers
bending over it; every fallen trunk its row of idlers. Wherever a cluster of
boulders made a passable smithy, crowds of sweating giants plied hammer and
sharpening-stone. The edges of the little stream that trickled down to the
valley were thronged with men bathing gaping wounds and tearing up the cool
moss to staunch their flowing blood. Never had the girl dreamed of such chaos.
It gave her the feeling of having plunged into a whirlpool. She threaded her
way among the groups as silently as the leaf-padded ground would permit.
She had come in by the back door, but now she began to reach the better
quarters. Her nose reported sooner than her eyes that a meal was in making;
and a glow of anticipation braced her famished body. Here, in this green
alcove, preparations were just beginning; a white-robed slave knelt by the
curling thread of smoke and nursed the flickering flame with his breath, while
his circle of hungry masters pelted him with woolly beech-nuts and cursed his
slowness.
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